World Championships 2015: Coach says Kim Mickle was okay to throw

Athletics Australia has defended the decision to allow Kim Mickle to throw in the javelin despite having torn ligaments in her shoulder.

AA head coach Craig Hilliard said Mickle was eager to compete and the doctors were aware of the state of her shoulder.

There had been some miscommunication from Mickle over the severity of her shoulder injury, which would be subject to a review after the championships but Hilliard said he was comfortable Mickle had ben allowed to throw.

The silver medallist in Moscow two years ago was able to register only one legal throw of less than 60 metres and was eliminated in the first round.

Mickle had said in a press conference before competing that her shoulder was “great” but said afterwards she had downplayed a dislocation she had suffered in Germany two months earlier. She said after being eliminated that 30 per cent of the tendons of the rotator cuff in the shoulder had been torn.

“Her shoulder has not been good for a while. No secret about that,” Hilliard said.

“I think there was a clear miscommunication in terms of what was said and what actually occurred. I am not going to go into that but at the end of the day Kim was pretty strong about wanting to compete here.

“She got through her training program but clearly there is an issue we need to address better.

“She was fairly headstrong about what she wanted to do, went out and performed, certainly not to her ability, but she wanted to find out one way or another.

“The injury she has got is clearly a rehab one for another length of time or potentially surgery. The medical staff will go through the process with her and come up with the ideal solution.

“At the end of the day Kim was convinced in herself that competing outweighed the risk of further damage.”

“She had all the treatment in Cologne, we had physios, medical people there and when she got home from London so she hasn’t been mismanaged in terms of her rehabilitation and where she’s at – I want to make that totally clear. Nothing slipped through the net in that instance.

“You can argue about `should she have gone out or shouldn’t she have gone out’ – she wanted to compete.”

The original release of this article first appeared on the website of ChangZhou Plastic Surgery Hospital.